“… So We’re Going To Let You Die.” Vote Deathocrat, Vote Death Panels

Robert Reich, the former Secretary of Labor under Clinton and more recently an Obama economic adviser, has been all over the media lately shilling for ObamaCare. The public option is no more dangerous than a box of puppies according to this professionally produced video featuring Reich. (I won’t embed it but it’s worth a quick watch.) The real injustice, according to Reich, is that political operatives like us are trying to “confuse and scare” people about change.

So perhaps he can explain for us his comments in the video below. Reich is speaking at a Colloquium on Political Science at UC Berkeley on Sept. 26, 2007. No other set-up is necessary – watch:

Here’s a transcript of the most relevant remarks of Robert “Third” Reich:

I’ll actually give you a speech made up entirely, almost on the spur of the moment, of what a candidate for president would say if that candidate did not care about becoming president. In other words, this is what the truth is and a candidate will never say, but what a candidate should say if we were in the kind of democracy where citizens were honored in terms of their practice of citizenship and they were educated in terms of what the issues were and they could separate myth from reality in terms of what candidates would tell them:

“Thank you so much for coming this afternoon. I’m so glad to see you and I would like to be president. Let me tell you a few things on health care. Look, we have the only health care system in the world that is designed to avoid sick people. And that’s true and what I’m going to do is that I am going try to reorganize it to be more amenable to treating sick people but that means you, particularly you young people, particularly you young healthy people…you’re going to have to pay more.

“Thank you. And by the way, we’re going to have to, if you’re very old, we’re not going to give you all that technology and all those drugs for the last couple of years of your life to keep you maybe going for another couple of months. It’s too expensive…so we’re going to let you die.”

Pay more, old people die. Check, and check. Sounds like exactly what any big government fascist would want.

“Third” Reich isn’t the only one pointing out this actually quite obvious central tenet of the Democrats’ health plan. Obama has appointed at least two other “experts” to advise him on medical issues. Here’s White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel’s brother, Ezekiel Emanuel, whom Obama appointed as OMB health policy adviser in addition to being picked to serve on the Federal Council on Comparative Effectiveness Research:

“When implemented, the Complete Lives system produces a priority curve on which individuals aged between roughly 15 and 40 years get the most substantial chance, whereas the youngest and oldest people get chances that are attenuated… The Complete Lives system justifies preference to younger people because of priority to the worst-off rather than instrumental value.”

“Attenuated” means, “to make thin; to weaken or reduce in force, intensity, effect, quantity, or value.” Attenuated care would be reduced or lessened care. Dare I say it, in this context it clearly means, “rationed care.”

Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel included a chart with his work (available here), which shows how he wants to allocate medical resources under a government plan:

When you’re very young, or when you start reaching your 50s and 60s, you start receiving less and less priority.

Then there’s Cass Sunstein, Barack Obama’s Regulatory Czar, who wrote in the Columbia Law Review in January 2004:

“I urge that the government should indeed focus on life-years rather than lives. A program that saves young people produces more welfare than one that saves old people.”

Barack Obama’s Regulatory Czar explains:

“If a program would prevent fifty deaths of people who are twenty, should it be treated the same way as a program that would prevent fifty deaths of people who are seventy? Other things being equal, a program that protects young people seems far better than one that protects old people, because it delivers greater benefits.”

The Democrats promise that a government health care system will reduce the cost of health care, but as the economist Thomas Sowell has pointed out, government health care will not reduce the cost; it will simply refuse to pay the cost. And who will suffer the most when they ration care? The sick, the elderly, and the disabled, of course. The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s “death panel” so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their “level of productivity in society,” whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil.

And for all the hell that the servants of hell have unleashed on her for her comment, she was 100% correct.

And I don’t mean just pay the “individual mandate” fines – which have been watered down significantly to make the Democrats’ plan more palatable – because they don’t create enough revenue. I mean if they don’t purchase health care in huge numbers, we will see serious shortages, rationing, and death by medical neglect.

Harry Reid made a staggering admission while trying to prevent Democrat-special-interest anathema tort reform. He said:

HARRY REID: “He talked about CBO saying that there would be $54 billion saved each year if we put caps on medical malpractice and put some restrictions — tort reform — $54 billion. Sounds like a lot of money, doesnt it, Mr. President? The answer is yes. But remember, were talking about $2 trillion, $54 billion compared to $2 trillion. You can do the math. We can all do the math. Its a very small percent.”

The Democrats’ health plan will be FAR more costly than any estimates yet offered. The government ALWAYS underestimates its cost for its programs. Medicare cost nine times more than was estimated, for example.

And let me point out that figures such as Robert Reich, Ezekiel Emanuel, and Cass Sunstein are proponents of the Democrats’ system and believe it will go well – AND THEY ARE STILL TELLING US THAT A CENTRAL PART OF THE SYSTEM WILL BE TO ALLOW ELDERLY PEOPLE TO DIE.

Democrat Rep. Alan Grayson “warned” Americans that “Republicans want you to die quickly” during a floor speech in the House of Representatives. But he is a liar. It is not Republicans who are literally out talking about letting people die, but Democrats.

Please come to your senses and start denouncing the Deathocrats’ Death Panel bill.